The nine-time Grammy Award-winning legend returns leading a septet in joyous original compositions and historic jazz standards
Courtesy photo.
SUMMARY
- UCSB Arts & Lectures presents the Wynton Marsalis Septet
- Tuesday, April 4 | 7 p.m. | The Granada Theatre
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- In this intimate performance, Marsalis will lead his septet in swinging originals and sweeping standards
- $46–$131 General Public / $20 UCSB Students (Current student ID required)(Includes facility fee)
- Tickets & Info: www.ArtsAndLectures.UCSB.edu, (805) 893-3535; or the Granada Theater, www.granadasb.org, (805) 899-2222
“Improvisation is freedom, swing is responsibility and the blues is an optimism that is not naïve.” Wynton Marsalis
SANTA BARBARA — UCSB Arts & Lectures (A&L) presents the Wynton Marsalis Septet Tuesday, April 4 at 7 p.m at the Granada Theatre. In this intimate performance, Wynton Marsalis will lead an exciting new edition of the Wynton Marsalis Septet as they present his latest original compositions as well as standards spanning the vast historical landscape of jazz music. Originally formed in the spring of 1989, the Wynton Marsalis Septet has featured such acclaimed musicians as Wycliffe Gordon and Wess “Warmdaddy” Anderson. 34 years later, this special group has taken new form, garnering some of jazz’s biggest rising stars. As Douglas Hall of Glide Magazine describes it, the Wynton Marsalis Septet “combines familiar musical friendships and his passion for discovering new talent.”
Wynton Marsalis talks about democracy and plays “Amazing Grace” at the dedication of Federal Hall
ABOUT WYNTON MARSALIS
Wynton Marsalis is an internationally acclaimed musician, composer and bandleader, an educator and a leading advocate of American culture. He has created and performed an expansive range of music from quartets to big bands, chamber music ensembles to symphony orchestras and tap dance to ballet, expanding the vocabulary for jazz and classical music with a vital body of work that places him among the world’s finest musicians and composers.
At age 17 Wynton became the youngest musician ever to be admitted to Tanglewood’s Berkshire Music Center. Despite his youth, he was awarded the school’s prestigious Harry Shapiro Award for outstanding brass student. Marsalis moved to New York City to attend Juilliard in 1979.
Wynton assembled his own band in 1981 and hit the road, performing over 120 concerts every year for 15 consecutive years. With the power of his superior musicianship, the infectious sound of his swinging bands and a far-reaching series of performances and music workshops, Marsalis rekindled widespread interest in jazz throughout the world and inspired a renaissance that attracted a new generation of fine young talent to jazz.
Wynton has produced over 100 records which have sold over seven million copies worldwide including three Gold Records. He is the world’s first jazz artist to perform and compose across the full jazz spectrum from its New Orleans roots to bebop to modern jazz. He has also composed a violin concerto and four symphonies to introduce new rhythms to the classical music canon.
Wynton has won nine Grammy Awards and in 1997 he became the first jazz musician to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his epic oratorio Blood On The Fields.
ABOUT THE SEPTET
Abdias Armenteros, Tenor & Soprano Saxophones
Abdias Armenteros is a native of Miami, Florida, where he attended New World School of the Arts High School. He began to play the saxophone at the age of 8 and started to play jazz in the 9th grade. With his acceptance into New World, Abdias was able to travel to New York City to compete in events like Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Essentially Ellington competition (which the New World jazz band won in 2016). Armenteros was also given the opportunity to travel internationally to places like Kagoshima, Japan, where he represented the city of Miami and the United States by being part of the only non-Asian group to perform in the Kagoshima Asian Arts Youth Festival. He has also done various summer programs such as the Brubeck Summer Jazz Colony and the Summer Jazz Academy with Jazz at Lincoln Center. Abdias is currently in his 1st year of his master’s degree at The Juilliard School as a Jazz Studies Major after completing his undergraduate degree at the prestigious institution. Since being in New York, he has shared the bandstand with world-renowned artists like Wynton Marsalis, Ben Vereen, Aloe Blacc, Victor Lewis, Arlo Parks. He performs regularly at some of the top jazz clubs and venues in the city with many other well-known musicians while continuing his studies at Juilliard. Abdias is a firm believer that music is healing, and we’re living in a time where we need healing the most.
Domo Branch, Drums
Domo Branch is a bi-coastal drummer, composer, and educator from Portland, Oregon. He is the co-owner of Sound Poets Productions with his partner Matt Malanowski. He is the leader of his own band “Branchin’ Out” and is also co-leader of the Brown Branch Jazz Orchestra. Since finishing his degree at New York’s Manhattan School of Music, Domo has established himself as one of the world’s top up-and-coming drummers, composers, and educators. Having performed and/or toured with prominent artists such as Sean Jones, Stefon Harris, Ron Artis II, Dianne Reeves, Mike Phillips, Terence Blanchard, Taylor Eigsti, Wynton Marsalis, and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. Furthermore, Domo has performed at a variety of festivals and venues such as Carnegie Hall, Konzerthaus Berlin, the Monterey Jazz Festival, Caramoor Jazz Festival, Frederick P. Rose Hall at Jazz at Lincoln Center, and New York’s Jazz Standard. Domo is also an experienced motivational speaker, having presented public speeches to musicians and students at schools on the subjects of staying motivated and being inspired.
Christopher Crenshaw, Trombone
A graduate of Thomson High School, Valdosta State University, and The Juilliard School, Christopher Crenshaw started playing piano at three years old and started playing trombone at eleven years old. He grew up playing keyboard with his father Casper in a gospel quartet from Thomson, Georgia, the Echoes of Joy. He has been with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis since 2006 and founded The Georgia Horns in 2011. He’s transcribed music and written arrangements for two Tony Award-nominated musicals, After Midnight, and Shuffle Along. He appears on numerous albums including Marcus Printup’s Ballads All Night, Wynton Marsalis and Eric Clapton Play the Blues, Paul Simon’s In the Blue Light, Ted Nash’s GRAMMY award-winning The Presidential Suite, and The Abyssinian Mass. Crenshaw has two albums of his own: The Georgia Horns Live at Dizzy’s Club with Marcus Printup, Thomson native Stantawn Kendrick, Kenny Banks Jr. , Kevin Smith and Brandon McCrae, and Christopher Crenshaw’s The Fifties: A Prism with the JLCO featuring Stantawn Kendrick.
Carlos Henriquez, Bass
Carlos Henriquez was born in 1979 in the Bronx, New York. He studied music at a young age, played guitar through junior high school and took up the bass while enrolled in The Juilliard School’s Music Advancement Program. He entered LaGuardia High School of Music & Arts and Performing Arts and was involved with the LaGuardia Concert Jazz Ensemble which went on to win first place in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival in 1996. In 1998, soon after high school, Henriquez joined the Wynton Marsalis Septet and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, touring the world and being featured on more than 25 albums. Henriquez has performed with artists including Chucho Valdés, Paco De Lucía, Tito Puente, the Marsalis Family, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Lenny Kravitz, Marc Anthony, and many others. He has been a member of the music faculty at Northwestern University School of Music since 2008 and was music director of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra’s cultural exchange with the Cuban Institute of Music with Chucho Valdés in 2010. His debut album as a bandleader, The Bronx Pyramid, came out in September 2015 on Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Blue Engine Records and his most recent album, The South Bronx Story, was nominated for a Grammy.
Chris Lewis, Alto Saxophone & Clarinet
Grammy Award-winning artist Chris Lewis has quickly established himself as an in-demand saxophonist and music educator. Lewis has played and worked with artists such as Wynton Marsalis, Herbie Hancock, Michael Bublé, Eric Reed, Terell Stafford, The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, John Beasley’s MONK’estra, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, the Mingus Big Band and the Count Basie Orchestra. Lewis has worked on soundtracks and can be seen on camera with shows on Amazon Prime and HBO/CNN Films. In addition, Lewis has taught clinics on small and large ensemble playing, as well as harmony and improvisation at numerous camps, festivals and universities and has served as a guest clinician for Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Regional Essentially Ellington Festival. Lewis currently resides in New York City where he maintains an active playing and teaching schedule.
Dan Nimmer, Piano
Dan Nimmer was born in 1982 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. As a young man, Nimmer’s family inherited a piano on which he started playing by ear. Nimmer studied classical piano and eventually became interested in jazz. At the same time, he began playing gigs around Milwaukee. Upon graduation from high school, Nimmer left Milwaukee to study music at Northern Illinois University. It didn’t take him long to become one of Chicago’s busiest piano players. Working a lot in the Chicago scene, Nimmer decided to leave school and make the big move to New York City where he immediately emerged on the New York scene. In 2005, a year after moving to New York, he became a member of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra as well as the Wynton Marsalis Quintet and Septet, all of which he is currently a member. Nimmer has performed and recorded with Jimmy Cobb, Norah Jones, Willie Nelson, Renée Fleming, Houston Person, Fareed Haque, Ruben Blades, Lewis Nash and many more. He has released six of his own trio albums on the Venus label (Japan).
About UCSB Arts & Lectures
Founded in 1959, UCSB Arts & Lectures (A&L) is the largest and most influential arts and lectures organization between Los Angeles and San Francisco. A&L annually presents more than a hundred public events, from critically acclaimed concerts and dance performances by world-renowned artists to talks by groundbreaking authors and film series at UCSB and Santa Barbara-area venues. With a mission to “educate, entertain and inspire,” A&L also oversees an outreach program that brings visiting artists and speakers into local classrooms and other venues for master classes, open rehearsals, discussions and more, serving K-12 students, college students and the general public.
Tickets are $46 – $131 : General Public / $20: UCSB Students and Youth (Current student ID required) (includes facility fee)
For tickets or more information, call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535 or purchase online at www.ArtsAndLectures.UCSB.edu.
Tickets are also available through the Granada box office at (805) 899-2222 and granadasb.org.
Major Sponsor: Sara Miller McCune
Event Sponsor: Jody & John Arnhold
Jazz Series Lead Sponsor: Manitou Fund
Special thanks to the Santa Barbara Independent, KCSB, and KCBX
UCSB Arts & Lectures gratefully acknowledges our Community Partners the Natalie Orfalea Foundation & Lou Buglioli for their generous support of the 2022-2023 season.